Comet Cursor

Comet Cursor for introduced spyware unknowingly to large number of people. This simple program had one purpose: to change your mouse cursor into Bart Simpson, Dilbert, or one of thousands of other cutesy icons while you were visiting certain Web sites. But Comet had other habits that were not so cute. For example, it assigned your computer a unique ID and phoned home whenever you visited a Comet-friendly Web site. When you visited certain sites, it could install itself into Internet Explorer without your knowledge or explicit consent and it was bundled with RealPlayer 7. Some versions would hijack IE's search assistant or cause the browser to crash.

At its height,
 more than 350,000 sites, including those of Warner Bros., Comedy Central, the funny cartoon Dilbert, and the Star Trek franchise, were utilizing the organization's innovation to adjust the cursor picture for their visitors. Though Comet's founders insisted that the program was not spyware, thousands of users disagreed. Comet Systems was bought by pay-per-click ad company FindWhat in 2004; earlier this year, Comet's cursor software scurried down a mouse hole, never to be seen again.